


Lost & Stolen Articles

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Infertility, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23221642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: He’s gone, drawn away up some sinister Jacob’s ladder of light.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Kudos: 15





	Lost & Stolen Articles

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-"Requiem"  
> A/N: For frangipanidownunder, from a tumblr prompt.

Everything is hard at night. 

He’s gone, drawn away up some sinister Jacob’s ladder of light. It’s something less than rapture, she fears, though she knows some part of him longed for it for years. She hopes he isn’t suffering. But They wouldn’t have taken him otherwise. If They have other goals beyond pain and domination, she’s never understood them.

There is an empty space beside her in the bed where he should be and a stranger in the place that should be empty, underneath the skin of her belly. She was told she would never reap the hope she sowed. In his absence, she can’t be glad about it. It would be joy, if it could be shared; bottled up inside her, the anticipation of the blessed event sours like wine left too long. 

The movements of her hands as she washes her face are an incanation. Bring him back. The way she turns the steering wheel on her way to work is a combination to unlock his safe return. The careful arrangement of perfectly-sharpened pencils in the top drawer of his desk is a sort of mise en place to enspell him. She’s an inch away from flipping the lights on and off seven times, another step in her empty rituals. 

Her mother gives her an icon of Saint Anthony. Scully is half-surprised she didn’t get one years ago. “I prayed over this while you were gone,” her mother says, and Scully weeps, tears rolling down her cheeks before she even understands she’s crying. Her mother rubs her back with one hand and lets the silence wrap them both - all three, soon - like a blanket.


End file.
